What’s New Today
Story #1 tells
you why Obama will lose in November. The
writing is on the wall if you know where to look. #2 tells you Romney’s five point plan to
restore American exceptionalism. #3 is a
video Frank Lutz finds to be the best so far in the campaign. #4 looks at the crosstabs in that CBS/NYT
poll. It’s interesting and frightening
if you are an Obama supporter. #5 asks the question is Harry Reid the dumbest
Senate Majority leader ever. #6 is all
about Richard Milhous Obama. #7 gives
you another sign that Obama will lose in November. Finally, #8 looks at the bombing in Bulgaria
and pins it on a former Gitmo detainee who was released to the custody of
another country and promptly set free.
Today’s
Thoughts
The claim that
Obama saved GM is fraudulent. What he
did was use political muscle to intervene in a bankruptcy process in order
to ensure a settlement on terms
favorable to his supporters, the United Auto Workers union, at the expense
of taxpayers.
Good Morning America makes a link to the Colorado
shooter James Holmes possibly being a member of the TEA Party. It
seems there is a Jim Holmes in Aurora Colorado who is a member of the TEA
Party. Or that James Holmes may be one of the 11 James Holmes listed in the
phone book in Aurora Colorado. Update:
Brian Ross came forward and admitted
he was wrong and that he was not, in fact, the same man.
Facing questions about why she and other top
Congressional officials won’t release their tax returns, House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) downplayed her previous demands for presumptive
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to release his, calling the issue a distraction.
1. Why Obama
will lose in November
I
hinted at it in June, and now I’m saying it outright in July: President Obama is going to lose this
election if something doesn’t change in a significant way.
How
can I possibly assert such a thing if election-prediction savant Nate Silver of
The New York Times currently gives Obama a 66 percent chance of winning? Well,
Silver has a fancy-shmancy mysterious data machine full of yummy variables.
I’m
applying common sense.
Less
than four months until the election, the
Real Clear Politics average of all national surveys has Obama at 46.2 percent,
vs. 45 percent for Mitt Romney….
…How is Obama faring on economic questions? Terribly. Much worse than his head-to-head numbers. In this week’s New York Times poll, 39 percent of the public rates him favorably on his handling of the economy, vs. 55 percent who disapprove. It’s pretty much the same in other polls.
This
is even worse for him than it looks because the poll sample itself — the registered voters interviewed by the
pollsters — is tilted in the president’s favor. Of those interviewed, 32 percent said they were Democrats, 25
percent Republicans and 37 percent independents.
That 7-point Democratic
advantage was the spread on Election Day 2008 — after the collapse in George W. Bush’s support, the
Republican scandals of 2006, the financial meltdown and the Obama surge. Does anyone seriously believe that, in
2012, Democrats will have anywhere near that advantage?...
The numbers are there is you want to
look at them. Obama has a RCP lead in
polls that give him anywhere from a 6-10 percent advantage in Democratic
voters.
2. Romney
strikes back
…Romney proceeded to outline a five-point plan for restoring
American exceptionalism. This
includes:
1) Pressing ahead with development of oil, gas, and coal reserves here in
the United States. Romney recounted how the Obama administration wanted no
fracking, no off-shore drilling, and no coal. Said Romney: "These things cost jobs and they've got to stop."
2) Expanding trade with other nations. Here he pointed out that
European, Asian, and Latin American nations had concluded dozens of free trade
agreements over the past three and a half years. The score under Obama's presidency: Zero.
3) Moving toward a balanced budget. He pointed out that the enormous
debt burden used to finance runaway government spending under Obama had been a
major factor in slowing economic growth.
4) Expanding choice in our schools. He pointedly observed: "Kids
first, and unions behind them."
5) Restoring economic freedom in a
major way. Said Romney: "Our
economy is driven by people pursuing their ideas and dreams. It's not driven by
government. And what the president is doing is crushing economic
freedom."
And those were not the only
highlights. Romney also noted how the
Obama administration had a shameful record of rewarding businesses that have
provided campaign contributions with loans and loan guarantees.
And he scoffed (just as Bastiat did in my article) at the
notion that governments created wealth whenever they built a road or bridge or
other public project. Who paid for that road or bridge?
Romney asked (as Bastiat did before him). It is the taxpayer -- whether as an
individual or as a business. Should the taxpayer pay twice for the same road or
bridge?
We have a president who has no
experience in the world of commerce and who has no use for business or free
enterprise. He has never met a payroll
or earned a profit -- and he seems to think that anyone who tries to do
those things is most likely to be out to cheat his customers and to treat his
employees with contempt. As Romney has said, he has "the most anti-business, anti-investment, anti-jobs administration
I've ever seen."…
Romney seems to be coming out swinging and I know I love
it. This isn’t 2008 and Mitt Romney isn’t
John McCain. Romney will have money, a
message and a record to his benefit.
Obama in the meantime has a record to his detriment.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577537233908744496.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
He said it touches the common man while Obama is attacking Romney for being out of touch.
4. NYT/CBS Polls crosstabs unsettling for Obama
…Note well that Obama is underwater on the favorability question, generally his strong suit, by double digits. More Americans are developing a poor overall perception of Obama the man, independent from their misgivings about his leadership. The economic numbers have to be extremely worrying for the White House, as voters' confidence is again slipping away. As I mentioned up top, this poll under-sampled Republicans and handed Democrats a 6.5 point partisan advantage. This would mean the 2012 electorate would be roughly the same as 2008's, which seems quite unlikely (the party breakdown was even in 2010). More importantly, the NYT/CBS survey oversampled independents, who will determine this election. Obama numbers among the indies are abysmal. Via the crosstabs:
(1) Obama's job approval among independents is a paltry 35/49.
(2) His economic job approval with indies is 31/61.
(3) Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama head-to-head by 12 points within this group, 47/35 (he's +9 with leaners).
(4) Obama's favorability with independents is -- wait for it -- 28/52 (!), with Romney actually above water at 32/31.
Barack Obama is in deep, deep trouble with independents at the moment. If these numbers hold, and the electorate is a hybrid of the 2008 and 2010 turnout models (which I think is likely), he will lose. Another thing to consider: We've been hotly debating Obama's barrage of negative and often false attacks against Mitt Romney for weeks. Obama has enjoyed a “massive’ spending advantage in swing states over the last month -- a dynamic that will change very soon. What has he done with this period? He's losing overall, losing on the economy, getting hammered with independents, and has seen his own favorability ratings plummet. This poll is much worse for Obama than meets the eye…
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/07/19/nytcbs_poll_romney_takes_the_lead
The spending advantage is something that is important. Romney will probably have more money to spend in this election than Obama. This is why Obama is begging for dollars and has had 106 fund raisers this year. He’s desperate to try to get a monetary advantage.
5. Is Harry Reid the dumbest Senate Majority Leader ever?
That’s a tough question to answer, but at a minimum, Reid must be a contender. Paul has been reviewing the history of the Senate lately, and may have an opinion to offer. But in contemporary terms, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader is much like Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and then Minority Leader: a head-scratcher. Is this really the best the Democrats can do? Do they not have any Senators or Congressmen who are actually–you know–smart? Competent? Not embarrassing? The bar is low, but apparently Reid and Pelosi are the best they can do.
So this is the latest from Harry Reid. He called a press conference to talk about how we need to raise taxes in order to save the republic, or something. So an intrepid reporter had the temerity to ask Reid why, if raising taxes is such an imperative, the Democrats didn’t do it when they had total control over the levers of Washington power in 2009 and 2010? Reid is flummoxed, and can only respond: “Next question.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/harry-reid-dumbest-senate-majority-leader-ever.php
The left tends to think of themselves as intellectual. I find that laughable.
6. Richard
Milhous Obama
This column has already told the
story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho
businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a
message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It
called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and
occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records.
Mr. VanderSloot has since been
learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth
his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate
Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.
Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal
government. In a letter dated June 21, he was
informed that his tax records had been "selected for examination" by
the Internal Revenue Service. The audit also encompasses Mr. VanderSloot's
wife, and not one, but two years of past filings (2008 and 2009)….
Obama has compared himself to Lincoln, Kennedy and even
Ronald Reagan. In the meantime
conservatives are comparing him to Carter and Nixon. He appears to have the competence of Jimmy
Carter and the honesty of Richard Nixon.
7. Pro-Obama
merchandise sales slump
In
a dramatic shift from then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 election effort to this
election cycle, anti-Obama CafePress
merchandise sales are outpacing pro-Obama sales.
During
the first six months of 2008, 86 percent
of Obama-related sales at CafePress were pro-Obama — just 14 percent were
anti-Obama.
Over
the first six months of 2012, 45 percent
of Obama merchandise sales have been pro-Obama, 55 percent have been
anti-Obama, according to CafePress totals.
By
comparison, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney‘s merchandise ratio has
fared better.
Over
the same 2012 time frame, 95 percent of
Romney gear purchases have been pro-Romney — just 5 percent have been
anti-Romney….
If you are looking for signs of what will happen in November, they
are all around you. I’ve noted a lot
more anti-Obama bumper stickers than pro-Obama bumper stickers on cars. And conservatives generally don’t put bumper
stickers on their cars.
8. Bulgarian
Bomber was detained in Gitmo
A former Gitmo detainee of
Swedish nationality, released to Swedish custody and let go, has been identified as the man who bombed the
busload of Israeli tourists
yesterday, killing 5 of them and the driver. Medhi Ghazali, 36, is being
named by the Bulgarian media as the suspect. The Times of Israel reports:
The
Bulgarian reports, rapidly picked up by Hebrew media, posited various versions
of how the bomber had detonated the bomb, including the suggestion that the
bomber had not intended to die in the blast, but may have wanted to place the
bomb on the bus and flee.
He had been held at the US's
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a
Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan, it says. He was taken into custody on suspicion of
being an al-Qaeda agent, having been arrested along with a number of other
al-Qaeda operatives.
Following a lobbying effort by
Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, Guantanamo authorities
recommended Ghezali be transferred to another country for continued detainment , and
he was handed over to Swedish authorities in 2004. The Swedish government did not press charges.
A
2005 Swedish documentary about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp starred
Ghezali, who detailed his
experience in American custody…
I guess there was good reason to arrest this
man and to keep him in detention.
